Bugs/Classic

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This is a compiled list of bugs discovered in the 'vanilla' PC version of Spelunky, submitted and maintained by Spelunky fans.

Many of these bugs have been fixed in the community-made update to Spelunky, Spelunky 1.2

If you've discovered a new bug (or verified an old one was squashed), edit this page with your findings. For convenience, use the following format:

'''Description:''' The conditions/result of the bug. Be descriptive.
'''Discovered by:''' Your name, and anyone who can replicate the bug.
'''Resolved?:''' Yes / No - Add the version of Spelunky you're running.

It is possile, though rare, thatif two Yetis decide to play catch with you, you may end up getting passed between them continuously, without having time to actually die, and the health meter will stay the same.Edit

Still alive Damsel!

After killing damsel, hold her by UP+X. If you look closely at her eyes, you can see her eyes open!

Description: While wearing a cape, fall at the slower speed, and fall down past a rope. Now for the rest of the your fall, regardless of how you open and close your cape, you will only fall at the slow speed.

Description: In area 2 if you throw a bomb into a pool of water that contains a fish, and the bomb explodes lowering the level of the water and the fish is exactly at the "new" water level (between air and water) at the time of the explosion, the fish will stay alive but will be unable to move.

Find a damsel. Push a square block in front of the exit door. Now run to the exit while holding the damsel *and holding the Up key*, so you exit as soon as possible. The damsel is crushed with some blood, but in the inter-level sequence she appears twice: once in Loot and once in Kills.

It is also possible for a damsel to be shot by an arrow trap as she exits the level through the door. If this happens, she will appear to be knocked away from the door and will run around as she normally does after being stunned, but can no longer be picked up by the player. If the player leaves the level through the door, the Damsel will be waiting for them there.

Description: Sometimes when getting the "I can hear prayers to Kali" level feeling In Area 4 the level will be generated with a lava pit, damsel and idol (as normal) inaccessible by normal means (for example the whole section is blocked by walls with no space for the Spelunker to pass). In some cases entry even with the usage of bombs or ropes is difficult (involving thrown bombs), as no suitable ground will be provided for a bomb to be planted.

Description: when the opening sequence says: with fate guiding my every move, i squeezed the whip at my side, the third line does not appear and the cutscene does not play. i have only encountered this once, and i may just be impatient, but i still note it.

Description: When a boulder stops a small distance from a wall, you are able to jump between them. Trying to jump out, the adventurer automatically grabs and clings to the side of the boulder, but you are unable to jump out. Pressing jump while clinging results in the adventurer "flailing" as if he was about to fall of the side, and releasing it returns to you clinging to the boulder again.

Description: Game won't start in 1920x1080 under Windows 7 (~100%CPU time consuming). Setting up compatibility in properties didn't help. I need to change resolution to 1280x768 every time I want to play. Graphic card: Mobile Intel 915GM/GMS,910GML Express (driver: Intel 6.14.10.4764)

EDIT BY Nicole: Seems to be a graphics-card specific problem, as I've tested it on the 1920x1080 resolution on the following cards: Nvidia Geforce GT 430; Nvidia Geforce 8600 and AMD Sapphire HD 6920, which all worked fine.

Description: Killed a Man-Eater, Shoppy popped out and proceeded to be bounced around by my sceptre shot. He landed, seemingly unscathed, threw me, but luckily I got off another sceptre blast. This one took. It shouldn't have taken two, and the first hit him multiple times (Sceptre is insta-kill on Shoppies AFAIK)

Discovered by: Fualkner

Resolved?: Not in v1.1

Note: I realize this situation will never come up in legitimate play, but it should be fixed regardless. I'd imagine the same effect would happen with a bomb, producing even more WTF's.

Description: Stealing from an aggro'd shopkeeper does not count as theft. This can be exploited by angering a shopkeeper by pushing him into the corner of his shop with a movable block, as this does not increase your "wanted level".

Description: if a wall containing a gem is isolated, the spelunker can use the jetpack to fly up to the wall and collect the gem (the gem was blue, I was holding a pickaxe, I approached from the lower left. I had the spectacles, allowing me to see the gem, but not the udjat eye.)

Description: If you don't have an audio device and attempt to run the game, it says "failed to initialize direct music audio" and then displays the following error message:
ERROR in
action number 1
of Create Event
for object oMusic:

Initialization of the sound system failed!

The game then reports that an unexpected error occurred while running the game.

Discovered by: Neopergoss

Resolved?: Yes! NOT BY UPDATE! All you have to do is make a shortcut instead of running the file manualy or from the desktop. You MUST make a shortcut and it will work fine.

Discovered by: xXSpelunkcraftXx

Workaround: Remove the sound folder and the game will launch after showing some errors. Or open Spelunky by going into your archiver and selecting Spelunky.exe

Description: If the player teleports onto an enemy's position, the enemy is destroyed, without leaving any body/ loot/ weapons. This isn't considered a kill in the score screen.

Design consideration: If the player teleports onto a shopkeeper's position, the shopkeeper will be destroyed, but won't be considered killed, allowing the player to steal from the shop with impunity. This applies to the Black Market too.

The instakilling and lack of corpse may be intended. The other parts are probably not.

Description: Under certain conditions, the bow can get stuck in the primed state, and simultaneously an arrow will be stuck on the player. If the player presses the BOMB shortcut in this state, an arrow-bomb gets stuck on the player.

If the player primes the bow, holds the bow and presses the BOMB shortcut only once, no bomb is created. Pressing the BOMB shortcut a second time works as expected. FIXED IN v1.1

If the player creates an arrow-bomb, the bomb counter doesn't decrease.

Description: While the player is climbing a rope, if he is hit by an enemy (eg bat or frog), he's pushed to the side, and levitates. If he's hit again and aligns with the rope, he can continue climbing.

Getting hit while climbing on vines and ladders works leads to levitation. FIXED IN v1.0

Description: When either a cultist, a Yeti, a man-eating plant, a vampire, or a cave man are stunned, caught on a web and not touching the floor, they don't wake up until they end up on the floor (by destroying the web, picking them up or throwing an item on them).

If the player throws a living damsel, she bounces on a wall and then gets caught on a web, she won't wake up until she ends up on the floor.

Description: When two wall-blocks are placed so as to touch diagonally, collisions can register through this diagonal wall (even though it's considered water-tight). UFOs and fire frogs can be stomped on through the walls' meeting point to cause an explosion.
Also, damsels can be picked up through this diagonal wall.

Description: If the player is carrying an arrow and the arrow from an arrow trap causes a collision with the player's arrow, the player receives no damage.
If the player is carrying an arrow and the arrow from an arrow trap causes a collision with the player, the player receives 4 points of damage (2 from each arrow).

Description: Under unknown and rare conditions, the key config menu doesn't relate the queried action to the key that was pressed. When this happens, the key config menu assigns the action to key code 0 in the keys.cfg file. When the game starts, the key with code 0 is falsely considered to be pressed once on every frame, and so the corresponding action is processed once per frame. (User reported cases: UP, PURCHASE always pressed)

Description: Joyconfig only recognizes a button if you are holding a gamepad button down while starting Joyconfig. Joyconfig doesn't recognize any other button presses. Specifically:

If you are holding a gamepad button down while starting Joyconfig, then that button is accepted as the Jump button.

If you start Joyconfig with a gamepad connected but nothing held down, the Jump button is quickly set to "RT (XB)". (The first line of gamepad.cfg is "-2". The tutorial says "Press B-2 to jump.") This effectively disables the Jump function. Delete the gamepad.cfg file to fix the problem.

If you start Joyconfig with no gamepad connected, nothing unusual happens, but you can only view the current settings, not make any changes.

Workaround 1: use Spelunky v0.99.5 to set gamepad.cfg, then copy to Spelunky 0.99.8 folder

Workaround 2, by Arucard on the forum: In the config file, delete the "-" before the "2" (this appears to not help with current versions however -- the program remains unworking and simply puts the "-" back in the configuration on its own.)

Workaround 3: since it is impossible to download v0.99.5 from any official sources nor any I've found even with the help of Google so far, JoyToKey or a similar joystick to keyboard remapping program is probably the only option left.

Description: The entrance to the City of Gold can fail to spawn, in the same way the Udjat Eye does.

Resolved?: Not in v.99.5

The city of gold can also spawn behind the entrance to the level. The locked entrance will be visible, but the Sceptre text will come up if you walk onto it. It can also appear behind the exit, or submerged in lava.

Description: When crushed by a falling movable block while either on a ladder or clinging to the side of the wall next to one, the ankh respawned me at the entrance to the level, clinging to the air on one side, and unable to do anything other than pause the game. I was using debug mode, so that may factor into it.

Description: I've had this happen on four separate occasions now. Just standing around and mysteriously die, with no attacks, enemies, bombs, etc. in sight. One time it happened is what made me question it as a bug, as I had 13 health from sacrificial altars and the Hedjet, precluding many forms of death. There doesn't seem to be any common cause, although the latest time it happened was when I tried to climb up a rope from the bottom of it.

Description: If a rock, pot, or skull falls into lava and is retrieved by the player before it vanishes, it will temporarily be unaffected by gravity; if thrown, it will continue to rise through the air until it strikes a wall, whereupon it behaves normally.

Description: I was in Area 2 today, with a "You hear rushing water" level feeling, and I was hanging out near the large water area at the bottom of the level. A bat was hanging on the ceiling nearby, waiting for me to come out of the water. I was trying to exit the water but instead kept rapidly entering and exiting, which caused the bat to spaz out completely. First it stayed in it's 'ready' or hanging position, and started sliding down and to the right. Then it started flying toward me while still underwater. Needless to say this was unusual behavior.

Description: When I tried to move the window while the game was running (and not paused), while I was in the Ice area, it crashed my entire computer. Spelunky froze (although the music continued playing), everything else about my computer slowed down enourmously, and after a bit I got a blue screen and a forced restart!

Discovered by: Zen

Resolved?: Supposedly in v1.1, tested on 4 different computers by Nicole

Description: When playing as the Tunnel Man, if you complete the first level after two minutes or more, the message A chill runs up your spine! will appear. If you take more than 150 seconds, the Ghost will appear, despite the fact that the Ghost normally can't appear in the first level. However, it can't catch you, because you've already passed through the exit.

Description: If you feed a shopkeeper to a man-eating plant, pick up the shotgun he dropped, and kill the man-eating plant, he will reappear with ANOTHER shotgun
Resolved: Not in v1.1 Unconfirmed. Works as expected, like in previous versions.

Description: If the player is thrown by an enemy, he may bounce off the wall and back onto the enemy, who will continue on throwing him. This can lead to the player dying with no control after the first throw. After a while of being dead, the Spelunker will disappear with the enemy constantly throwing nothing (looking like it is dancing) with pixel blood drops going every which way.
Suggested resolution: Cap the amount of times enemies can throw the player within a certain period.

Description: Hold an item when entering the final boss room. Drop that item, defeat the boss and exit the room without holding anything. In the final cut-scenes (inside the volcano and on the sand) you'll be depicted as holding the original item.

If you pick up another item while in the final boss room and exit with it, you'll be correctly depicted as holding that item in the final cut-scenes.

Description: Change to the damsel costume. Feed a spelunker to a man-eating plant. The animation shows a damsel being eaten.

Change to the Tunnel Man costume. Get eaten by a man-eating plant. No body is shown during the animation.

Change to the Tunnel Man costume. Press ACTION, then JUMP and you can attack mid-air. You can't attack mid-air if you press JUMP, then ACTION, or if you're holding a mattock item.

Enable "Press DOWN to run" in the config menu. Change to the damsel or the Tunnel Man costume. Press RIGHT, then DOWN, and you crawl to the right at the speed of running.

Have the Tunnel Man dig a shortcut, but not all of them. Gain the 4 trophies. Change to the Tunnel Man costume. Talk to the Tunnel Man about opening one of the remaining shortcuts. In the distance between the Tunnel Man and the exit, you'll be walking in the spelunker costume.

Change to the damsel costume. Talk to the Tunnel Man. In the distance between the Tunnel Man and the exit, you'll be walking in the spelunker costume. FIXED IN v1.0

Change to the damsel costume. Climb up the "Quit" rope. After passing the sign, the player will change back to the Spelunker until exiting the screen. The cutscene afterwards shows the damsel again.

Description: If the player is hanging onto a falling object (boulder, collapsible tile, and the player lands on a ledge next to the object, he is embedded into the wall and insta-crushed. (Analogous to self-telefrag from the teleporter?)

Description: If the players is running towards the left, and throws an arrow while only a few pixels away from a wall to the left, the arrow will get stuck in the wall, but will be facing right. This behavior only happens with hand-thrown arrows, not bow-thrown arrows.
Also, arrows that end up on the floor always face right.

Description: If a damsel is stunned and caught on a spider web, killing her removes the stunned-stars animation correctly.
However, if a dead damsel is placed on a web, the stunned-stars animation appears. The stars disappear if you grab her off the web, or you destroy it.

If a dead damsel is placed in lava, the stunned-stars animation appears.
Download the custom level

Description: If the player is stunned and falling, landing at the edge of a ledge means that he may continue falling after he wakes up. This happens because the 'stunned' collision mask is wider than the standing mask.

Description: There is an inaccuracy in the spike animation and actual damage. You can wait until the spikes deploy fully and run into them (after they are deployed) and receive no damage, yet, you will often receive damage from spikes just beginning to deploy but still in the 1st stage (when they can be seen, but only the tips are shown).

Description: If you're playing as the spelunker and you're moving up a ladder, an arrow shot by a dart trap will be absorbed by a held damsel. But if you're playing as the damsel and you're moving up a ladder, an arrow shot by a dart trap will not be absorbed by a held spelunker.

Description: If you get a good running start and jump, then fire a bow, you can hit yourself with an arrow. Similarly, if you fire immediately before drop-hanging over a ledge, you can shoot yourself. I don't know if these count as bugs, but just from a physics standpoint they shouldn't be possible.

Description: Fire frogs turn into normal frogs when they enter water. This doesn't happen if a fire frog has been "bomb-armed" (it starts shaking), and then thrown in water. In this state it just sinks down and explodes. Maybe it should revert to a normal frog.

Description: If the player flails on a ledge, trying to flip-hang from that ledge, the player will fall. Also, if the player edges towards a ledge by tapping the direction instead of holding it, trying to flip-hang, the player will fall.

Description: If the Black Market entrance spawns in the unremovable water of a Rushing Water level, only the water is displayed, and not the door. The Udjat Eye still functions properly, and the door can be entered.

Description: When the player has enough speed, catching onto arrows that are stuck on walls becomes impossible.
It's also impossible to grab an arrow that's stuck in a wall if another arrow is within a few pixels of it.

Description: Four things here:
1) The target will register a hit when it bumps into arrows embedded in the back wall. Don't know if this was intended but it's a bit ugly.
2) The target can also be hit from behind by arrows bouncing off the back wall. Again, don't know if this was intended but I would keep it personally because I think it's really cool, especially when getting a bullseye :P
3) If you score above 99 in the Moon Room, the score will just show as 99 on the scores screen.
4) If you score above 99 in the Moon Room, the final digit of the score (as shown in the Moon Room) overlaps with the clock icon after the score which looks ugly. Could be easily resolved by moving the time slightly further to the right.

Description: If a craps die is caught in midair, while spinning, it will continue spinning in the player's hands. If the die is held against a wall, it stops, and continues spinning if moved away from the wall. This can be repeated until a desirable number shows, then the dice can be dropped. Very handy to make up the $50,000 needed in the Black Market.

Description: I had the chest that contains the Udjat Eye spawn inside of a solid, non-movable block. I carried the key next to the block and the chest opened, revealing the Udjat Eye and consuming both the key and the chest (as per normal) but then the Udjat Eye was stuck in the block. I bombed the block, destroying it, which sent the Udjat Eye flying. I picked it up normally and everything after that point but it seemed pretty questionable.

Description: In Area 1, I've had a damsel spawn directly in front of an arrow trap on multiple occasions. The arrow trap doesn't fire until you move into its line of fire, automatically hitting the damsel. It seems like her presence should set it off before the player triggers it, since snakes and other stuff does.

Description: When you pick up a damsel at a kissing booth and throw her down again, she becomes stunned like normal damsels do. However, when she becomes unstunned, she resumes a normative damsel behavior, i.e. running around like crazy. When this running behavior makes her exit the shop, the shopkeeper of the kissing booth will aggro and display his "Die, Vandal!" message.

Description: If two trees have two tiles between them and they're at the same height, the treetops that are touching each other are the normal leafy green treetop tiles, whether or not it is a restless dead level.

Description: Occasionally, the game will get into a state where hanging controls change. If you are hanging and press toward the ledge and jump, you will drop instead of jumping up. In order to jump up you have to either press up and jump or release the left/right and press jump. In normal situations you should jump up on the ledge every time. This is a serious problem on any level with spike totems because if it happens you will be instantly killed and there's really nothing you can do about it.

Description: If a rolling boulder falls into a pit or hole, and falls past an arrow trap, the arrow trap is not set off. This is highly counter-intuitive because every other moving object will set off an arrow trap.

When playing the Tunnel Man, I encountered an arrow trap on the other side of the wall. I suicidally dug through the wall, expecting to be skewered by an arrow the moment the trap registers the movement. Nothing happened. The trap only fired when I approached. In short, the traps don't seem to detect destroying the environment as movement.

Description: Dropping a movable block onto the Final Boss makes him immobile. The block can't be pushed off due to bouncing while standing on top of the head. The player can also die from standing on top of the non-moving boss.

Discovered by: Several people on the forums, clarification by Gamer2600

Description: I tried to drop a crate into a hole to trigger an arrow trap, but instead the crate warped over to the other ledge. I jumped to the other side and tried again, and saw the crate warp to the opposite edge again.

Description: If you run into a dead enemy while it is still bouncing on the ground in its death animation, sometimes it still causes damage to you or even tosses you (in the case of Cultists and Yetis). This also works with already dead corpses if you "lift them up" with the scepter.

Description: If enough enemies are being stunned by arrow hits at the same time, the game can freeze. Among other possible causes is the entity generation code (blood).
E-mouse: I'm pretty sure this is from blood generation - I had a freeze when I shot far too many bullets at a few Shopkeepers offscreen.

Description: If a snake or man-eating plant is stuck within a wall, it will move up the wall in a straight line. If the man-eating plant is stunned while within the wall, it will move up in zig-zags. (Snakes can spawn in walls through pots, man-eating plants get stuck in wall after they wake up while being carried and ledge-hanging).

If the spelunker, a Yeti, or a cultist are stuck within the wall, they will not move.
Download the custom level .

Description: A small fraction of graphics cards/ graphics drivers combination results in several black blocks in the Score and Bonus rooms. For one user, running the Zune application triggers this effect.